Earlier this week, county assessors held a press conference announcing that property owners in Colorado should expect to see extremely high valuations of their property. The announcement came as no surprise to policymakers, who have been bracing for these new numbers since the summer of last year. The new numbers are a snapshot of the property market on June 30, 2022. Many believe these numbers to be the equivalent of an awkward family photo, a snapshot of property values at their post-pandemic-driven peak. 

Even as performative partisan politics played out on the House floor last Thursday, something subtle and encouraging was happening in committee rooms where the real work of legislating and governing happens in full public view.

Heidi Ganahl’s plan to “fix” Colorado’s complex and expensive transportation problems surprised me. I thought the plan from the Republican candidate for governor would simply be a retread of conservatives’ biannual effort to jam a hugely expensive wishlist into a severely strained budget. It was that, but it was also much more – the entire menu of options our elected leaders have been discussing for ten years. In some cases, she proposed things that have already been done by our current leadership.